From the scene: Still mourning in Dallas

Nov. 22, 2013
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Members of the Dallas Police Department Honorary Color Guard after a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Friday, Nov. 22, 2013, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. / LM Otero, AP

by Bruce Kluger, USATODAY

by Bruce Kluger, USATODAY

It was like a funeral -- or, more appropriately, like a house of mourning.

Flying into Dallas earlier this week was a somber affair, as the city braced itself for an anniversary it would have just as soon avoided. From newspaper kiosks and bookstores all along its gray streets, the handsome face of our 35th president stared out at the spectacle impassively. And the question that buzzed in everyone's minds -- from locals to tourists to the descending media -- was fairly simple: Could Dallas confront and accept its role in the tragic death of President John F. Kennedy, who was gunned down on these streets while riding in a motorcade -- his beautiful wife by his side -- fifty years ago today.

For many of us here this week, that horror is still palpable. By my second day in the city, it was easy to spot those who shared my feelings. We're all of a certain age, of course, and we recognized each other with wordless glances, as we all turned up at the same predictable places -- the alleged assassin's boarding house; the grave site of the Dallas police officer he'd also killed that day; and, of course, at the sickeningly familiar intersection at Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was fatally struck down.

That's where I was standing just after noon today, crammed among reporters and cameramen from around the world, who'd streamed into this city for the planned memorial. The weather was unseasonably bitter, the sky overcast, and an icy drizzle fell on us. The mood was sad and solemn.

Those who participated in the privately funded public memorial -- planned for more than a year with the city's cooperation -- tried to reconcile Dallas' place in that awful moment of history, and they did so with sobriety and respect. In his invocation, Bishop Kevin J. Farrell of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, spoke of the five decades of anguish that began here, acknowledging "the cruel suffering that was born on this hill," and explaining how Dallas -- "this city of God" -- was "disgraced and ruthlessly misjudged" in the years that followed. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, in his speech, likewise accepted the notion that on November 22, 1963, "hope and hatred collided" in Texas, and he vividly recalled how all of us "wept, just like the skies today."

Still, Mayor Rawlings insisted, John Kennedy's "New Frontier did not die in Dallas." He spoke optimistically of the city's rebound from shame; its now thriving industry; and it conscientious efforts to continue to live up to the ideals of liberty and equality set forth so long ago by Kennedy himself.

And yet throughout the ceremony, those of us witnessing the event could not escape the looming presence of the former Texas School Book Depository, its red-brick façade now iconic, where, most insist, the assassin fired the three gunshots that launched our half-century of reckoning. Even when we bowed our heads during a moment of silence at 12:30 PM -- the precise time of the assassination -- and church bells tolled throughout the city, and the U.S. Naval Academy Men's Glee Club began to sing "America the Beautiful," we were still trapped in the shadow of that menacing seven-story building.

And for me, that overwhelming feeling of futility is what today was really about. Fifty years later, we cannot throw off the crushing grief of the Kennedy assassination, nor can we fully understand it, because no real questions -- questions of substance -- have been answered. Conspiracy theories about the murder itself still thrive; our culture of guns and violence still shapes us; and, yes, politics (and make no mistake, a president, however revered, is ultimately a politician) still divide us.

And so I and thousands of others will leave this city tomorrow more or less as we had arrived, grateful to have had the opportunity to honor a man whose all too brief presidency had filled and then broken our hearts, but still crippled by the incurable emptiness that, like all deaths of loved ones, leaves us scarred.

Perhaps in another fifty years, historians will be able to explain how -- or if -- our nation truly changed on that sunny, tragic day in November 1963, when three cracks of gunfire split the sky and a blazing torch of hope was extinguished. But until then, for me at least, the mourning will continue.

Bruce Kluger is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. He lives in New York. In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.